Monday, August 17, 2009

An Easy One

Sometimes stitchers will ask me which of the American Quilt Collection is best to start with, or which is easiest to stitch as a first project. There are several, actually..... The first quilts I designed (Lone Star, Bear Claw, Wild Geese) are really the easiest to stitch because their designs are simple but elegant and they only require one skein of a variegated Watercolours plus a few skeins of a background color - usually ecru.

But another easy favorite of mine is FEATHERED DIAMOND.

I like it because it LOOKS complex, but it's really not - just lots of little triangles and then lots of straight stitches - easy peasy - and FAST! I stitched this model with Watercolours "Abalone", a very monochromatic thread in blues and greens, with a dash of purpley- pink.

I've often wondered how it would look if you changed the thread colors.... Using a bolder colorway would really jazz this quilt up, I think. Or you could even add some solid colors (or, hey, what about some metallic ribbon thread, too) in the borders and also in the wavy lines of the outer border patterns. Fun to play around with, this FEATHERED DIAMOND pattern! You could stitch it up a half-a-dozen different ways and they's all look different, depending on what threads you used....